“Ah, we’re getting the news by degrees,” exclaimed his wife. “What else did you hear?”
“That a policeman rode in from the Transkei this morning.”
“What news did he bring?”
“I don’t know.”
“There now. You never find out anything. Some day we shall all be taken by surprise and murdered in our beds.”
“Ha, ha, ha?” laughed Payne. “Well, at any rate, you’re no worse than the people at Komgha. If an express rides in, they jump to the conclusion that Kreli is marching on their precious town at the head of twenty thousand men. For my part I don’t believe there’ll be a shindy at all. It’s only another case of scare.”
But he did believe it, only he thought a pious fraud justifiable to reassure the womenkind.
“When I’m big,” remarked Harry Payne, aged seven, “I’ll have a gun and shoot a great schelm Kafir.”
“But, Harry, he may shoot you first,” said Lilian, during the laugh that followed upon this interruption.
“No he won’t,” persisted the embryo warrior. “I’ll shoot him.”